Chapter Twenty-One
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Hayes follows me home that day.
Not in a creepy way. We’re just working on our project at my house again. We’d made those plans days ago, before I came to the startling realization that I might Like Him.
There’s a traffic jam at the door, both my parents trying to leave while Hayes and I are walking in. Off to a typically chaotic start. “Can you help them?” Mom gestures behind her. I know what she means. Brothers. Homework. She’s putting on an earring, for some reason.
I nod, with Hayes right behind me.
“I completely forgot we have their parent-teacher conferences tonight. They booked them at the same time, of course, so your father and I have to split up.” That explains the earring. She’d changed out of her work uniform into her Impress the Teacher clothes.
I nod again. She presses a kiss to my cheek as they pass.
Dad ruffles my hair. They’re chattering all the way down the porch stairs, even as they walk to their separate sides of the car.
I never realize how loud they are until I see them through someone else’s eyes. They don’t seem to notice Hayes at all.
Speaking of loud, I hear a crash just beyond the still-open door. Then the tiny jingle of the cat, probably sprinting away from the scene.
“Oh my God,” I mutter under my breath. Hayes is just sort of standing there. Keys in his hand, backpack thrown over his shoulder. He laughs. As if this generalized mayhem is amusing to him.
“What was that?” I ask as I step into the house.
I kick off my shoes and hang my keys on the hook only I use.
At the mirror beside the hall tree, I let my hair out of the oppressive ponytail and wrap it in a much gentler messy bun.
My head’s starting to hurt, and that’s the first step to making it better.
I can see Hayes, leaning against the opposite wall just behind my own reflection.
No one’s answering my question, which only heightens my suspicion. I look around. Nothing looks especially disturbed. No more disturbed than usual, anyway. And no one’s screaming in anger or in pain. All good signs. No cat, though. She’s probably hidden in someone’s closet by now.
“He threw his calculator at me,” Gage says. He slides his dining room chair across the floor to pick it up. The wood scratching against wood sounds like nails on a chalkboard. “Didn’t hit me though. He can’t throw for shit.”
I roll my eyes. So does Dash, who’s an all-star baseball player. If he’d wanted to hit him, he would’ve. That thud I heard must’ve been the calculator bouncing off the wall. That calculator was expensive, dammit.
I stand in front of the table, weighing my options. We could stay here and be subjected to relentless distraction. Or, we could go up to my room and leave the boys out here by themselves. Where they’ll probably rip each other limb from limb. A difficult choice, really.
Hayes sits down beside me. Okay, then. Not a difficult choice for him.
“What are you working on?” he asks Dash. I sit down, across from Gage.
“I’m trying to write a paper. He’s doing math,” Gage responds. Hayes and I look at each other and silently decide to switch places.
Hayes sits down next to Dash; I take over his seat next to Gage. They start whispering about polynomials and speaking that generally math-y language that makes my brain buzz in all the wrong ways.
I look at what Gage has done so far: his name. He’s written his name on the top of a blank Word document. That’s the start of MLA format, at least.
“What’s the goal here?” I ask. I’ve been doing this for years with them, and it all becomes much easier when I start with figuring out what they need from me.
I used to just take over and show them how to do it like I would, and that never worked.
They don’t want to be like me. They just want to be done.
“It’s a three-page paper and I hate it.” He huffs, passing over an assignment sheet. The due date is right at the top. Tomorrow, of course. Better than yesterday, I guess.
“Did you read the book?” I ask casually, giving him the benefit of the doubt even though it hurts my heart every time he says no.
“Yeah. Actually.” He’s not even offended that I asked, just kind of surprised at his own answer.
“Okay, well then what’s the problem?” I’m trying not to betray my own surprise. Anytime we have this conversation the night before a paper is due, he’s usually just cracking the book open. Or asking ChatGPT for help instead of me.
“I don’t know what to write about.” He hangs his head, and there’s that twinge of something painful in my chest.
“You know what I’m going to tell you, don’t you?” I sift through the collection of looseleaf pages scattering the table so I don’t have to look at him. Mom has a vase of fake sunflowers in the middle of the table runner, and the mess is really ruining the nice fall vibe she’s going for.
“Make an outline,” he says in a rude imitation of my voice. I roll my eyes. I can’t even tell who these papers belong to. Neither of them ever puts their names on anything.
I hear Hayes laugh from across the table.
“Is math that funny?” I ask, almost certain he’s laughing at me.
“No,” he shakes his head, blond-brown curls falling all over his face. “You are.”
I most certainly am not. I want to say so, but I get sidetracked by what I’ve just unearthed below the piles of papers.
It’s Gage’s book. An old paperback that’s probably been read a thousand times by a hundred different students.
There are sticky notes stuck between the pages.
My sticky notes. The expensive Kate Spade tabbed ones that I only use on special occasions.
I got the set for my birthday like four years ago, and I still have most of them.
“Are these mine?” I flip through the pages, running my fingers over the passages he’s marked.
“Yeah. I kinda stole them from your desk.” He shrugs. He won’t apologize, and that’s fine. I don’t really mind. If my precious sticky tabs helped my brother with his first-ever literary analysis, they’ve been put to good use. I’m kind of touched, actually.
“I’m so proud.” I clutch the book to my chest.
“You’re proud that I stole from you?” Gage asks, ripping the book out of my hands.
“I’m proud you listened to me.”
He rolls his eyes, but he opens the book and actually gets to work. On a different tab, he has a pretty good outline going. For a while, I just lean back and watch him. He’s already done the hard work. I don’t know why I’m even here, except to bask in the glory of having taught someone something.
Minutes later, across the table, Hayes and Dash burst into laughter again. I guess math is that funny. They’re having entirely too much fun.
“We’re done.” Dash drops his pencil like it’s a microphone.
“You’re done already?” I’m amazed. His math homework is the bane of my existence. It’s worse than doing my own math homework, and there are few things I hate more than that.
Hayes nods, like it’s nothing to brag about.
“I’m impressed,” I admit. I cross my arms over my chest, and Gage and I smack elbows as he keeps typing.
This is something else Hayes has beaten me at, and I wait for that to stab at me.
Instead of that sharp ache, there’s something more tender.
Lighter, both in weight and somehow in color.
There’s this intense gratitude and an overwhelming sense of calm.
I let him into my house again, and I let him see beyond the veneer of normal that we all put up when an outsider comes over.
Without meaning to, I let him see the true heart of my messy, jumbled family.
Beyond the poetry memes and the books and the prim, proper, and professional image I’ve worked so damn hard to cultivate, I think this is actually, really who I am. And he’s here, seeing all of it.
He winks. He’s got to stop doing that. It makes me feral.
“Can I go be somewhere else now?” Dash asks, already packing up whatever in this academic slush pile he assumes is his.
“Is that all you had to do?” I ask. He won’t lie to me, I know it.
So when he nods, I do the same, effectively dismissing him.
When we were kids, we used to pretend this table was a classroom, and I was the teacher.
Of course I was the teacher. They weren’t even old enough to go to school at that point, but I was.
And I’d been there long enough to realize that’s what I wanted to do with my whole life.
By the time they learned to read, they were writing I hate school and I hate Nova on the carefully prepared homework assignments I made for them.
But they stayed at the table. And they still do, until I let them go.
Dash leaves, dragging his backpack on the floor behind him down the hallway.
“He could’ve at least said ‘thank you,’ ” I murmur, looking at Hayes.
“You know him,” Gage says, still typing. “He was raised in a barn.”
“No, he wasn’t.” I start stacking up the remaining papers. Some are Dash’s, of course. “He was raised at this table, just like me and you.”
I hear the deadbolt rattle, and the front door cracks open. Mom and Dad are back, and they’re muttering back and forth, this time in what I can already tell is an angry tone. That’s great.
“Which one of you are they mad at?” I ask Gage on a weary sigh.
He’s already pushing his chair back. “I was never here,” he whispers as he makes a hasty retreat. There’s nowhere to run, and he knows it. He’s just putting off the inevitable.
I sigh again, throwing my head back to lean against the ornate old wood dining chair. Living in this barn is exhausting.
But at least the farmers are home.